Do Warframes Dream of Electric Moa?
by DasCheesenborgir
Summary: An Operator muses over some rampant thoughts.


**This might be a reeeaally bad idea lol. Haven't gotten to Second Dream personally yet. Or paid too much attention to the more nuanced bits of lore :/**

 **Idk, I guess it's one of those things where I wanted to put it to paper and see what happens. It didn't seem like people around here are too much of a stickler for adhering to Warframe canon or lore either, so I figured I'd give it a brief shot. Got a little more planned out, had to start somewhere though.**

 **0-0-0**

It felt strange, cradling the intricately printed gold and ivory weapon in her hands. It felt incredibly _light,_ for all its bulk, easily dwarfing the hand that held it. Perhaps it was just the frigidness of the Orbiter interiors, but she could swear the finely melded Orokin alloy seemed to exude a soothing warmth onto the palm of her hands. Or perhaps she was just imagining things. She'd been through much colder by now.

A nip at her hairless scalp threatened to send a shiver racing through her body, but she held it in check, if only to avoid alarming Ordis, at least. The poor, fragmented Cephalon would probably have a fit if it knew she was _outside_ at all, now that she thought of it. She was expecting something from it, but perhaps it was more preoccupied with… computing Pi all day, or something. Room temperature didn't seem to a part of its concerns for certain, and she didn't feel like making it one.

Even now, after having beenoutside of her Frame a number of times, it was still… jarring, just how much _sensation_ tickled at her skin, even in an environment as sterile and otherwise seemingly so bland as the ship.

She hefted the pistol- the Lex, she seemed to hear through foggy, echoing recollections- admired its glint in the light. It was beautiful, if she dared say, dared to _think,_ of such a weapon.

That feeling of supposed warmth seeped away as quickly as it came, and she set the artifact- the weapon- down as gently as she could with the surge of discomfort that came with those rampant thoughts.

Her Frame knelt across from her, unmoving, thickly corded silver alloy reflecting the Spartan interiors of the ship. Its blank faceplate glared at the Orokin weapon set down before it.

She stared back at it.

'Rhino', they called it. A puppet.

Minutes passed as she watched it, the very'puppet' that had wrested jagged blade out of its abdomen and snapped it in twain when she'd been dangling from a throat-crushing grip. The very 'puppet' that flooded her mind with such unbridled disdain whenever she commanded it to heft the pistol laid down between them, the very 'puppet' that had had given her such a rush of impossible, incomprehensible _giddiness_ when she'd first laid eyes on that overpriced Corpus piece of crap cradled in its lap.

Half of her funds had gone into buying the damned thing- the same, unwieldy, two-pronged rifle that any blockhead Crewman carried with them, just with a gaudy green metal sheen plated over it. Any sensible buyer could see it was a scam- _she_ sure as the Void did, right now for certain, no longer seeing things through the colorless neuroptics behind that helmet.

She slipped into a more comfortable sitting position, crossing her legs on the floor after a few more strainful seconds on her knees, mirroring the ever-stoic frame before her. Maybe she was hoping it would in turn mimic her movements.

It didn't.

There was still a little seam in the fibres running up its abdomen, a rending wound that had never quite sealed itself up completely for whatever reason. A lasting reminder of that surreal, waking dream she could still so vividly see through the strangling haze.

Sometimes it was her with the blade struck through her stomach- her thick arms wrestling with the twin prongs, the Operator dangling just out of reach. Sometimes she dreamt of other things entirely- sometimes she was a mouse amongst beasts, a meek and stunted parody of a Rhino. Sometimes she was a jackal, wasting away in its den and welded into an alien body, but lounging contently nonetheless.

"Do you want to talk about it?" She whispered softly.

Her voice echoed back at her in subdued tones, bereaved of furor, low and bitter. The Rhino didn't budge. A metal puppet, dangling from her strings.

 _No._


End file.
